First thing, with screen printing, there is a bunch of different ways to achieve the same end result. What I am showing you here is only one way that I print posters, so this should be a considered an introduction, but know that there are plenty of different methods out there that will work just as well.

Beginning: Making your Film Positives

1) Make a 1-to-1 film positive. A 1-to-1 film positive for screen printing is an exact-sized reproduction of your artwork on a clear transparency (or film positive). There are a few ways to do this; the most expensive is to have a film outputting shop do this for you (pictured). A cheaper way is to go to Office Depot and buy some clear black/white transparencies that will print from your ink jet printer or a photocopier. Transparencies from ink jet printers tend to be a little bit light for screen printing, and the ink toner has a tendency to come off after you burn your first screen, (not so good if you want to reburn your image a few times) but its pretty cheap and works well. Transparencies for photocopiers seem to work a bit better if the copier is any good. The toner seems to stay on the transparencies a lot longer.

2) Check your film positive for mistakes. If you find a mistake (pict), you can fill in the mistake with a Rubylithe pen (pict). You can get these pens at a screen printing supply house and at some art stores. Theyre about $5 a pen, and if you have drawing skills you can use them to just draw your design (art) right onto clear transparencies and skip the step above.

3) Making fill colors or background colors (separations). You can do this on the computer if you have skills, but this is how you do it by hand. First you get some Rubylithe. (You pretty much have to get this at screen printing supply house, art stores used to carry it, but not so much any more.) Rubylithe is a two-ply paper that blocks UV light acting the same way as black toner works on your photocopied transparencies. You use an X-Acto knife to slice the red part away from the clear part. The red part is where is where the ink is going to print once you burn a screen. (Nerdy computer geek side note: In Photoshop if you ever jump to Quick Mask Mode, the default color is red to mimic Rubylithe.)

Next, you need to figure out how much Rubylithe you are going to need for the section that you want to color in. Lay the Rubylithe out on a table, measure up, cut easy. (Rubylithe is around $50 a roll and doesnt last long.)

To make your fill colors, you should have a light box so that you can see through the Rubylithe to your original transparency. If you dont have access to a light box, you can always use a large window during the day:

1. Tape up your main film positive first.

2. Then tape up your sheet of Rubylithe on top of it.

3. Get a sharp blade on your X-Acto.

Now start gently slicing the outline of the part that you want to get rid of. Be careful not to cut through the clear backing of your original film positive. You want your background to be TRAPPED under your detail so the lines of the fill color dont really show up or they show up as little as possible. That is called trapping. Trapping is legit on poster printing, but not really legit with t-shirt printing (but that is a different story). So, once you slice an outline, use your fingernail or the X-Acto to pull back the Rubylithe that you dont want. The red part that is left will end up being whatever ink color you choose. Im going to use a light tan or what used to be called Flesh in a 64 pack of Crayola crayons wtf. Anyway, take that piece down and put up a new piece of Rubylithe and repeat the process until all your colors are cut and your separations are complete.

first color sep

2nd color sep

3rd color sep

Burning a Screen

Silk screens are actually made up of a meshed piece of fabric (not really silk anymore) that is attached to a wood or metal frame. Frames come in about any size that you want. The frame that is pictured allows you to stretch your own mesh over and over again easily. You buy a bulk roll of fabric and when the fabric breaks (which it will do at some point), you loosen up the bolts, add a new piece of mesh and tighten that mother down. Most frames that you buy at stores have the mesh glued onto a wood or metal frame. Both frames really do the same thing, it is just that re-stretchable frames will cut costs down if you break a lot of screens or do a lot of screen printing.

The mesh that goes onto a frame is pretty important. It comes in a lot of different sizes and depending what you are printing, picking the right mesh count could make a pretty big difference. Mesh ranges from 40 to 355(super fine detail). The lower the mesh count (i.e. 60 mesh) the more ink that you are going to be able to put down in one pass, but the trade off is that you wont be able to get a lot of detail and your ink drying time is going to be a bit longer think of 60 mesh like the way a screen door is, where you can actually see the individual squares. With a higher mesh count screen, like a 230 mesh count, you wont be able to see the individual squares that easily, but you will be able to get a lot more detail with less of an ink deposit. But if you are using water-based ink or oil-based ink, you run the risk of having the ink dry in the screen which is a total pain in the arse. For posters I would suggest either using a 110, 137, or 156 mesh count.

When you buy a new screen, the first thing that you need to do is clean the mesh. The factory that makes the mesh always leaves some sort of crud on the mesh that will screw up your first coating of emulsion. Use any kind of degreaser (i.e. Simple Green) and a scrub brush to clean it. Spray the degreaser on the mesh and gently scrub for a bit, then rinse it off with water and let it dry. After your screen dries, coat the screen with photo stencil emulsion. Put it on kind of thin, but not too thin and let it dry (this is the red stuff on the mesh-pictured). Note: Emulsion is light sensitive, so you want to keep it out of direct sunlight as much as possible. I used to let screens dry underneath my bed or in the closet.

Once the emulsion totally dries, your screen is ready to be burned. Place your film positive on the screen. The way that you do this depends on how you burning the screen, but the stacking order is always the same: light source ->film positive ->silkscreen frame. Sometimes your light source is on the bottom, so your film goes on the back (like mine). If the light source is above, your film positive will go on the front.

1. Place the film positive on the screen where you want it and tape down the corners.

2. Put the screen inside your exposure unit.

3. Turn on the vacuum unit. The vacuum unit sucks everything together to get you the most detail and best burning results.

4. Set the timer.

Once the screen is burned, rinse the screen off with water. I spray it down and let it sit for a second, and then come back and rinse everything out. ---What is happening here is that the black toner and/or Rubylithe from your film positive is actually blocking the light from the exposure unit. The part that isnt blocked is harding into the screen from the light. When you are rinsing the unexposed/blocked part, you are making a negative of your artwork, then when you print it, you will be making a positive again. Like this: film positive(+) to mesh(-) to your paper(+).

After you rinse your screen off and everything looks good, you need to let it dry. You can let it sit outside now, or build a drying box with a little space heater in it to speed up the process.

An exposure unit can be a little expensive to buy right off the get go, but there are more ways than one to get around that. One way is to have a screen printing shop do it for you. Another is to rig up some lights and just DIY. Personally, I did this for years. I used to take two kitchen chairs, lay a broomstick on top of them and hang two painters lamps from the middle of the broomstick. I used 200-watt light bulbs in the painters lamps and would lay the silk screen on the floor with books under the corners to keep the screen off the floor. Instead of the vacuum unit thing, I just had a piece of glass cut that would fit the inside of the silk screen frame. I sandwiched the film positive between the glass and the silk screen, then centered the lights over the frame and burned for about an hour. The most important thing is making sure the distance between your light bulb and your film positive is the same so you can figure out your burn times. I used to keep mine at 20 inches. If you try this and everything washes off, you didnt burn the screen long enough. If you cant get the emulsion out of the screen, then you burned too long. Using higher-powered light bulbs can mean a shorter burn times and vice versa. It may take some experimenting. Another way to burn a screen is to just leave it out in the sun. Spray Tack your film positive onto the front and cover the backside of the frame with something dark. Reflections will screw you up. You could tape a black garbage bag to the back of the frame and that should work. As far as how long you should burn the screen, well, it depends on what kind of day it is. The bottom line is that you are going to have to fool with this for a bit to get it right.

The first thing you need to do is set yourself up in a printing area with a smooth printing surface, and some hinge clamps to hold the screen in place. The printing surface can be a board or anything smooth with a surface space a bit larger then your biggest screen. I use a smooth board that I can move around with the hinge clamps bolted on one side. The hinge clamps have holes in them for bolting/screwing them into your board and cost about $25 for two. Note: You can actually just screw the hinge clamps onto the top of a smooth table, but I didnt do that because I like to have everything out of the way when Im not using it. Also, I have 3 hinge clamps on my table, because I use all different sizes of screens. You need to have at least 2 hinge clamps on your screen, but sometimes if Im using a smaller screen, it wont reach to the furthest clamp so I added a third.

Next you need registration tabs, pins, etc. Basically, the job of a registration tab is to keep all your sheets of paper in the same spot for the entire run of your print. This way, when you go to print a second/third/fourth color/etc, everything lines up.

On the right-hand side of this picture there are metal registration tabs. These have a little raise circular area that fits inside of a normal 2 or 3 ring hole puncher (that you can get from Office Depot). Before you print on your paper, you hole punch all the paper in the same spot, using at least 3 holes per piece of paper. Then when you line your paper to your screen, you slip these registration pins into the holes and tape them down to your board. I hate this method. For one you leave holes in your paper, and punching holes in the paper before you start printing is time consuming, but this actually a pretty common method so I figured that I would mention it. What I like are the yellow tabs. Most paper fits nice into then and they are super easy to use and set up. Once you have your paper to where you want it, you tape down the 2 outer tabs and leave the middle one untapped, so to guide your paper. Youll see.

Alright, back to printing the poster. Grab your screen and tape up the part of your screen where there isnt emulsion (the yellow part on the picture). This prevents ink from going through the screen in the unwanted areas.

Lock your screen into the hinge clamps anywhere, doesnt matter.

Grab a piece of paper that you are going to print on. Tape your main film positive onto the exact area where you want to print on the paper.

Once the film is taped on the paper, slip the paper under the screen and line up the paper to screen

Once you get the paper exactly where it is in registration with your background color, carefully lift up the silkscreen and put your hand down on the paper with film positive on it. Shoulder the silkscreen, and then grab your yellow registration tabs. Slip the tabs under the poster and tape them down on one side.

After you get at least three registration tabs on the paper, carefully slip the paper out of the yellow tabs and tape the inside section of the tabs down, leaving the middle tabs un-taped.

Mix some ink (background green).

Take the film positive off of your paper.

Slip your blank sheet of paper into the registration tabs and pour in some ink.

Grab a squeegee. (Note: Squeegees have square edges or round edges. Round-edged squeegees allow for more ink to go down as you are printing. Square edged ones give you a little crisper detail. Also, as you print you want to keep the squeegee at an angle so that you are only using one of the square edges. If that edge gets dull over time, you can flip in over, or sandpaper it square again.)

Now print your first print ...

and hopefully you wont do what I just did. I just realized that I cut the Rubylithe part of this background color wrong, so that print and screen are trash. At this point, I need to set up the film positive on the window again (Im going to use the light table since its dark out), re-cut the Rubylithe, re-burn a screen, and wait for it to dry, then set it up again. (Main culprit of my mistake pictured below)

Now you can clear off the table and un-tape the registration tabs.

Lock your next frame into the hinge clamps.

Mix the next ink color (background orange).

Tape the film positive up on a blank piece of paper again and line up the paper to the screen, then add ink.

Print your stack of paper.

Lay the posters in the rack, the floor wherever to dry.

Clean up that screen with water or ink cleaner. Clear off the table again and un-tape the registration tabs. Lock your next color into the hinge clamps and tape the film positive up on a blank piece of paper again. Now line up the paper to the screen and tape down the registration tabs.

Mix the next ink color (skin color).

Add ink and print the run.

Clean up the mess, clear the table.

Lock in the next screen. Tape the film postive up on a blank piece of paper again. Line up the paper to the screen and tape down the registration tabs.

Grab the green ink add .print .clean.

Last Color (black)

Most of the time youll want to print black last because it will cover any trapping that you have done with your film separations. If it isnt black, it would most likely be the darkest ink color or the film positive that has the most detail, this isnt a rule or anything, but Also, when you first start printing a poster, I think that its easiest to use a medium color first, like the green that is what I was going to do until I fucted up. Also, using the green or orange color on this design first ensures that the left-hand border of the paper will be straight with the skin color in register, meaning if I printed the skin first, I might have run the risk of getting that left-hand border off a bit when I printed the other colors.

Anyway, set up the last color the same way as the other colors. If you did everything right, you should be good to go.

Now, take out your paper cutter/straight edge/ scissors or whatever and cut the posters down. One of the reasons that I printed this poster so close to the edge is so that I can use the other side of the paper for something else like a drawing of a puppy jumping over a rainbow.

After you have sized your poster, roll it up, grab a couple mailing tubes, slip the posters inside the tubes, and

We haven't been featuring many interviews as of late. Let's change that up as we check in with a few local San Francisco artists like Kevin Earl Taylor here whom we studio visited back in 2009 (PHOTOS & VIDEO). It's been awhile, Kevin...

If you like guns and boobs, head on over to the Shooting Gallery; just don't expect the work to be all cheap ploys and hot chicks. With Make Stuff by Peter Gronquist (Portland) in the main space and Morgan Slade's Snake in the Eagle's Shadow in the project space, there is plenty spectacle to be had, but if you look just beyond it, you might actually get something out of the shows.

Fifty24SF opened Street Anatomy, a new solo show by Austrian artist Nychos a week ago last Friday night. He's been steadily filling our city with murals over the last year, with one downtown on Geary St. last summer, and new ones both in the Haight and in Oakland within the last few weeks, but it was really great to see his work up close and in such detail.

Congrats on our buddies at Needles and Pens on being open and rad for 11 years now. Mission Local did this little short video featuring Breezy giving a little heads up on what Needles and Pens is all about.

Matt Wagner recently emailed over some photos from The Hellion Gallery in Tokyo, who recently put together a show with AJ Fosik (Portland) called Beast From a Foreign Land. The gallery gave twelve of Fosik's sculptures to twelve Japanese artists (including Hiro Kurata who is currently showing in our group show Salt the Skies) to paint, burn, or build upon.

Backwoods Gallery in Melbourne played host to a huge group exhibition a couple of weeks back, with "Gold Blood, Magic Weirdos" Curated by Melbourne artist Sean Morris. Gold Blood brought together 25 talented painters, illustrators and comic artists from Australia, the US, Singapore, England, France and Spain - and marked the end of the Magic Weirdos trilogy, following shows in Perth in 2012 and London in 2013.

San Francisco based Fecal Pal Jeremy Fish opened his latest solo show Hunting Trophies at LA's Mark Moore Gallery last week to massive crowds and cabin walls lined with imagery pertaining to modern conquest and obsession.

Well, John Felix Arnold III is at it again. This time, he and Carolyn LeBourgios packed an entire show into the back of a Prius and drove across the country to install it at Superchief Gallery in NYC. I met with him last week as he told me about the trip over delicious burritos at Taqueria Cancun (which is right across the street from FFDG and serves what I think is the best burrito in the city) as the self proclaimed "Only overweight artist in the game" spilled all the details.

Ever Gold opened a new solo show by NYC based Henry Gunderson a couple Saturday nights ago and it was literally packed. So packed I couldn't actually see most of the art - but a big crowd doesn't seem like a problem. I got a good laugh at what I would call the 'cock climbing wall' as it was one of the few pieces I could see over the crowd. I haven't gotten a chance to go back and check it all out again, but I'm definitely going to as the paintings that I could get a peek at were really high quality and intruiguing. You should do the same.

The paintings in the show are each influenced by a musician, ranging from Freddy Mercury, to Madonna, to A Tribe Called Quest and they are so stylistically consistent with each musician's persona that they read as a cohesive body of work with incredible variation. If you told me they were each painted by a different person, I would not hesitate to believe you and it's really great to see a solo show with so much variety. The show is fun, poppy, very well done, and absolutely worth a look and maybe even a listen.

With rising rent in SF and knowing mostly other young artists without capitol, I desired a way to live rent free, have a space to do my craft, and get to see more of the world. Inspired by the many historical artists who have longed similar longings I discovered the beauty of artist residencies. Lilo runs Adhoc Collective in Vienna which not only has a fully equipped artists creative studio, but an indoor halfpipe, and private artist quarters. It was like a modern day castle or skate cathedral. It exists in almost a utopic state, totally free to those that apply and come with a real passion for both art and skateboarding

I just wanted to share with you a piece I recently finished which took me 4 years to complete. Titled "How To Lose Yourself Completely (The September Issue)", it consists of a copy of the September 2007 issue of Vogue magazine (the issue they made the documentary about) with all faces masked with a sharpie, and everything else entirely whited out. 840 pages of fun. -Bryan Schnelle

Jeremy Fish opens Hunting Trophies tonight, Saturday April 5th, at the Los Angeles based Mark Moore Gallery. The show features new work from Fish inside the "hunting lodge" where viewers climb inside the head of the hunter and explore the history of all the animals he's killed.

Beautiful piece entitled "The Albatross and the Shipping Container", Ink on Paper, Mounted to Panel, 47" Diameter, by San Francisco based Martin Machado now on display at FFDG. Stop in Saturday (1-6pm) to view the group show "Salt the Skies" now running through April 19th. 2277 Mission St. at 19th.

For some reason I thought it would be a good idea to quit my job, move out of my house, leave everything and travel again. So on August 21, 2013 I pushed a canoe packed full of gear into the headwaters of the Mississippi River in Lake Itasca, Minnesota, along with four of my best friends. Exactly 100 days later, I arrived at a marina near the Gulf of Mexico in a sailboat.

I don't think at this point it needs to be written since the last update to Fecal Face was a long time ago, but...

I, John Trippe, have put this baby Fecal Face to bed. I'm now focusing my efforts on running ECommerce at DLX which I'm very excited about... I guess you can't take skateboarding out of a skateboarder.

It was a great 15 years, and most of that effort can still be found within the site. Click around. There's a lot of content to explore.

I'm not sure how many people are lucky enough to have The San Francisco Giants 3 World Series trophies put on display at their work for the company's employees to enjoy during their lunch break, but that's what happened the other day at Deluxe. So great.

When works of art become commodities and nothing else, when every endeavor becomes “creative” and everybody “a creative,” then art sinks back to craft and artists back to artisans—a word that, in its adjectival form, at least, is newly popular again. Artisanal pickles, artisanal poems: what’s the difference, after all? So “art” itself may disappear: art as Art, that old high thing. Which—unless, like me, you think we need a vessel for our inner life—is nothing much to mourn.

Hard-working artisan, solitary genius, credentialed professional—the image of the artist has changed radically over the centuries. What if the latest model to emerge means the end of art as we have known it? --continue reading

"[Satire] is important because it brings out the flaws we all have and throws them up on the screen of another person," said Turner. “How they react sort of shows how important that really is.” Later, he added, "Charlie took a hit for everybody." -read on

NYC --- A new graffiti abatement program put forth by the police commissioner has beat cops carrying cans of spray paint to fill in and cover graffiti artists work in an effort to clean up the city --> Many cops are thinking it's a waste of resources, but we're waiting to see someone make a project of it. Maybe instructions for the cops on where to fill-in?

The NYPD is arming its cops with cans of spray paint and giving them art-class-style lessons to tackle the scourge of urban graffiti, The Post has learned.

Shootings are on the rise across the city, but the directive from Police Headquarters is to hunt down street art and cover it with black, red and white spray paint, sources said... READ ON

We haven't been featuring many interviews as of late. Let's change that up as we check in with a few local San Francisco artists like Kevin Earl Taylor here whom we studio visited back in 2009 (PHOTOS & VIDEO). It's been awhile, Kevin...

If you like guns and boobs, head on over to the Shooting Gallery; just don't expect the work to be all cheap ploys and hot chicks. With Make Stuff by Peter Gronquist (Portland) in the main space and Morgan Slade's Snake in the Eagle's Shadow in the project space, there is plenty spectacle to be had, but if you look just beyond it, you might actually get something out of the shows.

Fifty24SF opened Street Anatomy, a new solo show by Austrian artist Nychos a week ago last Friday night. He's been steadily filling our city with murals over the last year, with one downtown on Geary St. last summer, and new ones both in the Haight and in Oakland within the last few weeks, but it was really great to see his work up close and in such detail.

Congrats on our buddies at Needles and Pens on being open and rad for 11 years now. Mission Local did this little short video featuring Breezy giving a little heads up on what Needles and Pens is all about.

Matt Wagner recently emailed over some photos from The Hellion Gallery in Tokyo, who recently put together a show with AJ Fosik (Portland) called Beast From a Foreign Land. The gallery gave twelve of Fosik's sculptures to twelve Japanese artists (including Hiro Kurata who is currently showing in our group show Salt the Skies) to paint, burn, or build upon.

Backwoods Gallery in Melbourne played host to a huge group exhibition a couple of weeks back, with "Gold Blood, Magic Weirdos" Curated by Melbourne artist Sean Morris. Gold Blood brought together 25 talented painters, illustrators and comic artists from Australia, the US, Singapore, England, France and Spain - and marked the end of the Magic Weirdos trilogy, following shows in Perth in 2012 and London in 2013.

San Francisco based Fecal Pal Jeremy Fish opened his latest solo show Hunting Trophies at LA's Mark Moore Gallery last week to massive crowds and cabin walls lined with imagery pertaining to modern conquest and obsession.

Well, John Felix Arnold III is at it again. This time, he and Carolyn LeBourgios packed an entire show into the back of a Prius and drove across the country to install it at Superchief Gallery in NYC. I met with him last week as he told me about the trip over delicious burritos at Taqueria Cancun (which is right across the street from FFDG and serves what I think is the best burrito in the city) as the self proclaimed "Only overweight artist in the game" spilled all the details.

Ever Gold opened a new solo show by NYC based Henry Gunderson a couple Saturday nights ago and it was literally packed. So packed I couldn't actually see most of the art - but a big crowd doesn't seem like a problem. I got a good laugh at what I would call the 'cock climbing wall' as it was one of the few pieces I could see over the crowd. I haven't gotten a chance to go back and check it all out again, but I'm definitely going to as the paintings that I could get a peek at were really high quality and intruiguing. You should do the same.

The paintings in the show are each influenced by a musician, ranging from Freddy Mercury, to Madonna, to A Tribe Called Quest and they are so stylistically consistent with each musician's persona that they read as a cohesive body of work with incredible variation. If you told me they were each painted by a different person, I would not hesitate to believe you and it's really great to see a solo show with so much variety. The show is fun, poppy, very well done, and absolutely worth a look and maybe even a listen.

With rising rent in SF and knowing mostly other young artists without capitol, I desired a way to live rent free, have a space to do my craft, and get to see more of the world. Inspired by the many historical artists who have longed similar longings I discovered the beauty of artist residencies. Lilo runs Adhoc Collective in Vienna which not only has a fully equipped artists creative studio, but an indoor halfpipe, and private artist quarters. It was like a modern day castle or skate cathedral. It exists in almost a utopic state, totally free to those that apply and come with a real passion for both art and skateboarding

I just wanted to share with you a piece I recently finished which took me 4 years to complete. Titled "How To Lose Yourself Completely (The September Issue)", it consists of a copy of the September 2007 issue of Vogue magazine (the issue they made the documentary about) with all faces masked with a sharpie, and everything else entirely whited out. 840 pages of fun. -Bryan Schnelle

Jeremy Fish opens Hunting Trophies tonight, Saturday April 5th, at the Los Angeles based Mark Moore Gallery. The show features new work from Fish inside the "hunting lodge" where viewers climb inside the head of the hunter and explore the history of all the animals he's killed.

Beautiful piece entitled "The Albatross and the Shipping Container", Ink on Paper, Mounted to Panel, 47" Diameter, by San Francisco based Martin Machado now on display at FFDG. Stop in Saturday (1-6pm) to view the group show "Salt the Skies" now running through April 19th. 2277 Mission St. at 19th.

For some reason I thought it would be a good idea to quit my job, move out of my house, leave everything and travel again. So on August 21, 2013 I pushed a canoe packed full of gear into the headwaters of the Mississippi River in Lake Itasca, Minnesota, along with four of my best friends. Exactly 100 days later, I arrived at a marina near the Gulf of Mexico in a sailboat.

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